I finished A Nation Under Our Feet, and am on to James McPherson's epic history of the civil war era, Battle Cry Of Freedom. Atliens are supposed to avoid the Oxford series, but it really has sucked me in. I just cracked it a few days ago, but I'd make a few mundane points based on my early impressions:
1.) The thing about reading good works of nonfiction is you often get that "How could I have been so stupid!" feeling. Like, in the words of Marlo, you thought it was one way, but its the other way. That happens to me a lot. Blogging has, paradoxically, forced me to pick up the pace of my book consumption. So it's really been happening a lot. McPherson's book is no exception.
2.) I'm learning to be very careful about making sharp judgments of historical figures, based on present day conditions, context and mores. The United States in the 19th century, seems to barely be a country. Mob justice is common, juries can't be trusted, and each state basically has its own army.
3.) Which leads me to my last and most cliche point--I'm coming to finally, at long last, admire Abraham Lincoln. I am almost ashamed to admit this. It feels cliche and silly. But its true. That sound you hear is the burning of the lost of my black lefty credentials. The end is nigh.
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hey T, these points are only cliche if one hasn't done the work that you have done to expose oneself to these ideas/realities, to weigh them against one's life experience, to come to terms with life's complexity and to be willing to change one's perspective as needed, all signs of maturity as I see it so not an end but a deepening.
You know, it's just all about insecurity. I think to be a decent blogger you have to kind of strip in front the world. It's tough talking about your past. But what's tougher is talking in the present about what you don't/didn't know. It's just this constant admission of ignorance. With people coming to see you you think, "Damn, I really should know more!"
In other words, the impulse isn't to write about what the McPherson book is teaching you, but about how it confirms something you already thought, to use it as a set-piece for some argument that you've long been making.
I find that deepest values--tolerance, for instance--don't change. But my perspective on events and people do. Writing about the "change" is, I think, a large part of this blog. But it'd be much more comfortable, and less embarrassing, to do it in private. There's a strong desire to present oneself as an expert, to make people say "Man, he really knows his shit."
Remember that your admissions of ignorance are a reason why we're here. Because if you didn't know it, we probably didn't either, teacher.
I hear you, as another deep "cliche" says the process of gaining wisdom is coming to know what you don't know, the late philosopher Richard Rorty wrote a powerful review essay of Umberto Eco's great book Foucault's Pendulum titled "The Pragmatist's Progess" where he talks about how one can read books like one does debate prep cutting and pasting 'evidence' for one's pre-judices or one can expose oneself to books (different life experiences/points of view) with the hope of having one's understanding/empathy/world widened. So keep up the good work and thanks for being willing to be show the hard and often humbling work of developing wisdom and maturity in a world obsessed with putting up a front.
TNC, I can't tell you how many thing I have looked up and learned since I first started reading your blog. That's part of what makes your blog so compelling.
Glad to hear you're enjoying "Battle Cry of Freedom," I'm sure that will be on the reading list next year. Just a side note to Schwarz's article is that often the reason British historians are more interesting to read is due to academic styles/demands. The Brits are typically more free to engage in rhetorical flights of fancy and dispense with too many foot notes than their American brethren. Curse them and their freedom.
That review is totally outdated on the Oxford History of the United States. Of the last two books released, Herring's History of US Foreign Relations is strong and Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought is one of the best history books published in years. Gordon Wood's upcoming book on the early republic is also highly anticipated.
I've always been struck by the difference between history books and history text books, particularly those used in public schools. I hear Americans condemn China and North Korea for indoctrinating their citizens, I hear Japan accused of revisionism, but other than the Panthers and Nation of Islam condemning the racisism in history texts few seem to see a problem here. From the underpinnigs for our war of independence, to Native American genocide to the role of the Soviet Union in WWII the impression of history our children form from history texts wildly differs from the the bald facts. I suppose it's inevitable that education will be subjective, but the organized group that seems to care about it are the Christanist conservatives who are working to increase the indoctrination.
I think some of that is changing, though slowly. I remember "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was required reading for me senior year of high school, and that damn book just about wrecked me.
What makes me most crazy about historical texts is how stunningly boring they are. Real history is chock full of the kind of incredible stories that make you actually feel like you have a kinship with your country. Why we weren't taught more about Jefferson and Adams' epic bromance in high school, for example, I can't imagine. It's the perfect way to put a personal face on the political stories of the day.
I was thinking the same thing about the prose of our survey histories. My students (college-age) amaze me with their ignorance regarding basic facts. I mean, Cupid is a planet and we have 57 states. Survey histories do not make it easy. Feeling you get is committee writing. As you say, boring.
Increasingly, in my own reading, I find I care less about the subject. When a writer is recommending, one who delivers interesting prose in an engaging way, bring it on.
Survey history is exactly the phrase for it. I'd prefer it if American History texts left off with the dates, legislation and Marbury v Madison entirely, and focused on telling the story of society in those eras. My high school self would have been ecstatic; I have a bitch of a time remembering specific dates.
You want what Chartier calls cultural history. Similar to what Foucault called the history of ideas. And I agree. A problem is that in order to write such things you have to be a diligent researcher, a good writer and NOT a plagiarist. Most survey historians are neither.
Actually, a lot of college survey texts are written by rather prominent historians. Foner has written one, as has Alan Brinkley and James Henretta. Say what you will about them or their prose, but they are quality historians, diligent researchers and (sometimes) very good writers.
Certainly someone with the moniker deathbypapers knows of what they speak. Great name. My point, overly enthusiastically made, had more to do with the high school history text than the college level texts to which you refer.
I am biased (how Foucauldian of me). Cultural history, the history of ideas, social history -- all or one of the above -- present a richer, deeper understanding than the survey history commonly presented, by the text, to nearly all American high school students, and most (not all) American college students. There are indeed great teachers, and authors, who go beyond the basic survey.
Adding to my comment to deathbypapers. Having now read your comment below about Lynne Cheney in the 1990s. Excepting my hyperbole, I see we are probably largely in agreement. (Though working in different areas; art history here, where the situation is far far worse... nearly all of survey art history still passes as white man bio, discuss the same picture someone else has discussed, discuss a picture at MOMA everyone knows, discuss another picture everyone else has discussed, discuss one new picture, white man bio, repeat).
Based on your recommendation, I'll pick up Foner and judge more fairly. Thank you.
Last thing before someone else jumps in. Yes art history texts now include the obligatory chapter on Asian art, references to 4 or 5 sub-Saharan African pieces (as though they represent in any way an entire continent that has hosted 100s of different cultures), a picture or two of native American art, and a riff on Jacob Lawrence or Aaron Douglas (who I like, no slight intended, but I like Henry Tanner even more).
Feel good inclusionary tactics at their worst. Look at us, we're inclusive! But no real discussion of what art meant and what art is in different communities of our culture.
Yah, does sound like we are coming from the same perspective. Art history huh? I've always found that stuff interesting. What you're describing (a few things from Sub-Sahara/Native America but primarily "western"), sounds to me like what I call "sidebar history," a plague that still afflicts modern historiography. That type of ghettoization is almost as hurtful as the previous ignoring because its implicit message is white men were doing all the important things but every once in a while a woman or someone brown (special points if its both!) pops up and has a little role. Well that's my little rant... any good art history quasi-surveys that you know of? I'd like to gain a more thorough introduction to the subject but don't know where to start.
What to recommend. I have in the past but currently, in my class, I use no textbook. Students hate that, even though I give them copies of my lecture notes and post all my images.
Fortunately I am not responsible for teaching survey art history (my most popular course is called Art As Ideas) so I can get away with talking about the impact of Egyptian religious belief, neo-Platonism and the Byzantine fascination with light, Rod Serling as a neo-surrealist, the nihilism of post-WWI art, Wittgenstein and modern abstraction... things I'm interested in and that will hopefully make students interested in art history.
The two dominant texts are Gardner's Art Through The Ages and Janson's History of Art. They're the Current Williams & Friedel (dating myself) of art history. Gardner says it is global; Janson's subtitle is The Western Tradition.If you wanted to have a quasi-survey, as you put it, Gardner would be the one. At least she tries.
I've used books like Lucie-Smith's Art and Civilization and Robbs / Duncon, Arts Ideas and Civilization. They combine some philosophy, historic perspective, and a variety of arts (not just painting and architecture). They don't fit my course but they do offer some interesting insights. There are many others of this sort.
There's one book by someone who you may recognize. Paul Johnson, Art: A New History. He doesn't even try to be inclusive so it's mistitled. Definite lean toward Western. But it is more challenging, not a survey. Not something my students could handle -- 750 pages plus of relatively tight text that has a point of view (that I often don't agree with, but at least it's there). 32 chapters and nobody else would devote 1/32 of a survey art history to The Western Penetration of Asia or The Belated Arrival of Russian Art or The Beginnings of Fashion Art. Plus it's not dominated by pictures. I will not accomplish my life goal -- to write a book about the history of art without pictures.
Bottom line we're still waiting for a Robert Darnton (or Forner -- bought my copy before I wrote this post) to do their thing with the survey. Every survey teacher knows we're not telling the truth. We talk about it. But you have to say something. Fortunately because of the course I teach, I can admit that what I'm saying is a selection gleaned from my own interests and prejudices.
One of my favorite authors is Larry Gonick, who has written numerous books in the "Cartoon Guide to" form. There are some omissions in them and they're obviously not complete (especially the Cartoon History of the Universe series), but they're funny. When you can make history entertaining, you actually remember it. And when it's presented in a sufficiently compelling form, you want to go find out more. So I wouldn't call his work the be all and end all, but it's an amazingly good way to get a sense of the scope of history that will lead you to learn even more. I couldn't recommend his books highly enough for middle/high school history classes.
Those things look ridiculously entertaining. Assuming I have my own brats some day, I'll have to pick up that whole series. I remember a series of illustrated biographies of major figures that a friend of mine had when I was a kid. Inveterate reader though I was, you could not have gotten me to read through a prose biography of Marie Curie, but I tore through those cartoon books like they were printed crack.
@calexical
Who needs kids? I'm 25 and love the books to death. I'm not in any way ashamed to admit that I learned a lot from them and many of my subsequent investigations into history have been influenced by the Cartoon History of the Universe series. I also can't wait until the latest volume of the Cartoon History of the Modern World comes out. Larry Gonick is getting a bit preachy (there are way too many Bush allusions in the last volume), but it's still solidly entertaining and enlightening work.
I don't know if it's the same in the US as in the UK but John Burrowes in 'A History of Histories' (which is a good read) thinks that it's a product of the professionalisation of history. Schools focus on teaching the technique of history, so analysing sources and being aware of the bias of the source and so on, but that it means that they're not teaching a grand narrative so much.
So sections of a nation's history are cut up so you can study them while learning some way of doing history but at the cost of the class being aware of the narratives that make up that nation's history. If you see what I mean. He expresses it a lot more elegantly.
Shaun
Tompkins: We tried to fix some of this back in the 1990's but were rebuffed. Guess who led the charge against a (somewhat) accurate historical record? Lynne Cheney. For a good review look at "History on Trial" by Nash, Crabtree and Dunn.
If you want a somewhat accessible "textbook" try "The New American History" by Eric Foner or "Internationalizing US History" by Thomas Bender.
This makes me think of how difficult it can be to compare cultures and nations- not only across time, but across geographical and other types of distances. One of the fundamental "truths" that I try to use to guide the way I vote, judge people, live my life, etc., is the "Trading Places" (Dan Akroyd and Eddie Murphy) moral- people truly are fundamentally created equal. I don't mean individually- obviously some have gifts others don't- I mean in terms of population. I think it's absolutely true that if you could take a million Swedish babies, a million Nigerian babies, a million Thai babies, etc., and distribute them to families across the world and wait until they were all grown up, you'd find that the differences in wealth, health, success, failure, attitudes, etc., could be explained ENTIRELY by economic circumstances, social circumstances, family situations, regional peace or turmoil, and not at all by their ethnic origin.
I believe the same applies when judging America before the civil war. America was certainly an unjust nation and vastly unequal society. But the people weren't born evil. Many of them did evil things, as citizens of Nazi Germany may have done and allowed, and members of countless other unjust societies in history. There's no excuse for the actions slaveholders took in abusing, raping, breaking up families, any more so than for those who trafficed and profited in trading slaves, or the more modern Nazi prison guards. But while I truly hope and believe that had I been born to a slaveholding family, or employed as a Nazi prison guard, that I would have had the courage and wisdom to utterly reject the prevailing philosophy and injustice around me, I can never know for sure that I would have.
When judging a man like Abraham Lincoln, I believe it's fair to look at the time and place he lived, and compare him to his contemporaries. This becomes harder the farther back you go- Jefferson and Washington were both slave holders, for example. While it's fair to say owning slaves was an extremely unjust and evil act, I believe it's also fair to compare men like Jefferson and Washington to other slave holders, as well as the Americans (rare in that day, but including Benjamin Franklin) wealthy enough to own slaves, but who rejected the concept of slavery morally.
I think this type of analysis raises far more difficult questions than easy answers. And it can be extremely difficult to check your preconcieved notions at the door. But ultimately, I believe it's extremely worthwhile.
Slightly O/T, but I love ol' Ben Franklin. It's incredible to me when you read his writings how modern he sounds compared to a lot of his contemporaries, and even compared to some writers from this century. It makes me think that perhaps people with certain inquisitive, nondogmatic outlooks are a little less limited by the time and place into which they were born than others. Maybe TNC is one of them. :)
Don't worry, Ta-Nehisi. There are things a lefty can like about Lincoln (e.g., he instituted an income tax ;-)).
lol. and poetry friday shall return.
BTW,
Whatever happened to your poetry Fridays? If and when you bring it back, I have a suggestion for you: The Shield of Achilles by W.H. Auden. Or something else by Auden (e.g., The Fall of Rome).
Does anyone read John Berryman anymore? I loved and love him:
Drop here, with honour due, my trunk and brain
among the passioning of my countrymen....
Bury me in a hole, and give a cheer,
near Cedar on Lake Street, where the used cars live.
Man, I must have read Battle Cry of Freedom a half dozen times when I was a kid. The antebellum USA was such a fascinating, dynamic, and horrifying place, and I don't think any other account I've read makes it so clear.
Just chalk me up as someone who would love to hear your thoughts on "Battle Cry of Freedom" once you have had a chance to get into it.
Re Lincoln: I was really struck by a Frederick Douglass quote that Gary Wills cited in his recent review of Henry Louis Gates'
Lincoln on Race and Slavery, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750:
"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined." That seems to apply also to progressives' hopes and fears about Obama.
Be very careful. I read Battle Cry of Freedom a few years ago. It turned me into one of those Civil War nerds that you hear about. I wasn't finished with the war til about 25 books later. It's that good.
So where did you go afterward? I'm gonna be occupied with the Civil War and Reconstruction for the next year, at least. Thinking of going to Eric Foner next. Or maybe some primary docs--memoirs, diaries and letters from soldiers.
For the Civil War itself, Dana's "Recollections of the Civil War" is great. For the politics (and also the war), Goodwin's Team of Rivals really stands up to all the hype. And for Reconstruction, Morris's Fraud of the Century is an amazing look at the period and its aftermath.
I read Foner's Reconstruction. It's the only book on the subject that I have read. I liked it a lot. Like McPherson, it whetted my appetite for more, but there really isn't that much out there that I know of. For the Civil War, I liked Bruce Catton very much. He's one of the few who write from the northern perspective. He's also a great writer. I also liked Freeman's biography of Robert E. Lee. It's pretty hagiographic, but his descriptions of the battles don't get any better. By biggest disappointment was Shelby Foote. There's something really stilted about his prose. If the movie 300 was around when I read him, I would have thought he wrote the screenplay.
I'd second the recommendation on Bruce Catton. One of the few things that I make time to reread every five or six years.
If you can stand stilted Foote (I can, mostly to glean how a Southerner still leans), try Grant's autobiography. Very long, often boring, but insightful. Reconstruction - new musts are Slavery By Another Name and Capitol Men. And of the new Lincoln books, Looking for Lincoln: The Making of An American Icon. Really historiography -- more about what we as a nation have thought of him than an interpretation of what he was. But a good break from the War.
If you find yourself buying individual battle accounts, or even worse accounts of individual regiments in individual battles, you're doomed. You are a Civil War buffnerd.
You could go Foner (who is excellent) or try Leon Lithwack's "Been in the Storm So Long: the Aftermath of Slavery." It's a relatively old (1979), but good book. Though if you are going to do more than one or two more books of reading on this subject you should REALLY check out Foner's chapter in "The New American History" on Civil War/Reconstruction. Most of it is online, thank god for google books: (long link) http://books.google.com/books?id=J7hnUHplC7wC&dq=new+american+history&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=aGgpSorrBZ7aswOI6LSnCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PRA1-PA85,M1
That will give you a great introduction
I am more of a 19th century baseball geek than a Civil War nerd. Colored baseball is not my main area of interest, but you might google on "Octavius Catto". He was an up-and-coming civil rights leader in the Frederick Douglass school until assassinated. He was also one of the founders of the Excelsior Base Ball Club of Philadelphia, which in 1869 played the first game between a colored and a white club. Catto was an interesting guy, and reputedly a pretty decent ballplayer.
Warren Harding said this regarding Lincoln:
“In every moment of peril, in every hour of discouragement, whenever the clouds gather, there is the image of Lincoln to rivet our hopes and to renew our faith”.
I'm not particularly religious, but if there is a God She directly laid her hands on Old Abe.
I'm unaware of a greater figure in American history.
As a boy from a rural town who grew up without much formal education, Lincoln is a beacon to me. Like Lee said about Franklin above, Lincoln too comes across as a modern man. I've particularly always loved Lincoln's law partner's description of Lincoln's ambition as "a little engine that knew no rest." He was selfless but also deeply ambitious. He did great things and terrible things. He had the courage of his convictions, but was occasionally gripped by the "fierce urgency of whenever" as well as the "fierce urgency of now." The real Lincoln described by his contemporaries is way more interesting than the saint described by his hagiography.
Lincoln is amazing because of his very "humanity". The mental health issues he dealt with, depression, his nutjob wife, losing children etc. His trip through Richmond after the Confederate Capitol fell is a great story. Sort of like the idea of Patton and Churchill pissing in the Rhine River, only with more class.
The fact that Lincoln could overcome all and win the Civil War is amazing.
The late historian Shelby Foote basically said there were two geniuses in the Civil War. Stonewall Jackson and Old Abe. I don't have much use for Stonewall, but I think one argument for the existence of God could be the election of Abe Lincoln in 1860.
oops.
Lincoln in Richmond.
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/richmond.htm
Agreed that Lincoln is amazing - he is really like a Shakespearean character.
The Foote reference is incorrect though: Shelby Foote's "two geniuses" of the war were Lincoln and Nathan Bedford Forrest.
As Ed McMahon might say "you are correct, Sir".
http://books.google.com/books?id=x9zj_OBOwOgC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=%22shelby+foote%22+genius+lincoln+bedford&source=bl&ots=1hQZWxcwot&sig=QrksyvmO0SIKwaKBUxSaTNJQnhk&hl=en&ei=ZJApSsXqGJi0NYzZ6McJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1
It was Forrest and not Jackson.
btw -- the Oxford history recommended by Schwarz in your link, "A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People," is indeed a treat. When you're done with immersion in Civil War and Reconstruction America, T-NC, you might try The Age of Revolutions -- Europe (and the US angle is important) from the end of the American Revolution to 1848. So much of who we are -- and what we're still arguing about -- stems from that period. And it's full of riveting people and stories.
If you want to go back further, the English Civil War is also a good one to check out. The motivations of the people actually involved were so different from what one tends to expect when we think about revolution today. The rabid anti-Catholicism of the Roundheads is a prime example in my mind. And yet, that revolution played a very important part in shaping the ideas and expectations of the early Americans when they decided that absolute monarchy wasn't such a hot idea.
Just a side not but is Dubois's Black Reconstruction in America still worth reading? It's been on my reading list for a year but I haven't picked it up yet.
It's still worth reading, simply from an intellectual history standpoint, but it won't give you the best picture of the time as it came out long before a lot of the theoretical models historians use now were developed (gender, "weapons of the weak," whiteness theory etc). If you only have limited time to devote I'd suggest "Nation Under Our Feet" or "Capitol Men."
Thanks those are on the list as well. Just haven't had time to read them yet.
So by "weapons of the weak" do you mean the strategies/tactics discussed in the book of that name by James Scott? Or something different? I read that book because I stumbled upon "Seeing like a State" and was totally impressed, but I've never run into anyone else who's read it, so I'm curious if it's had some cultural impact.
As for book recommendations, I have so far enjoyed Charles Lane's The Day Freedom Died. It is not a broad survey like many of the titles named here, but it's a really well detailed look at a violent, terroristic fight for political power in northern Louisiana during Reconstruction - as well as the means by which the American legal system absorbed and ratified the raw violence.
don't worry, t. you can grow to admire lincoln, love lincoln, even worship lincoln, and never lose your grasp of his imperfections.
he was far from perfect. he was deeply flawed.
but those of us who do love him, love him despite his deep flaws.
which is really the only honest way for one human to love another, you know?
so keep that lefty critique, however savage and scathing it was. soon you'll see that he would have been the first to engage you on it, to defend some things and repent many others. he was capable of change. he knew he didn't know it all.
i'm glad someone gave a shout out to ben franklin, too. the happiest and most fortunate great american, as lincoln was the most morose.
so here's the next stage: after you read a few more books, you drop me a line, and we'll start touring some battlefields together. gettysburg, definitely. but that's just the start.
when you start finding that you want to visit battlefields every spring, you'll know you're over your head.
bread and roses, yeah james scott's "Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance." That book has had a huge impact on modern historiography as its theoretical models have been expanded too a host of different settings. Hahn's "Nation Under Our Feet" (which TNC has been talking about) uses that, as does Robin D.G. Kelley's "Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class." It has gone beyond African-American's and is used by Greg Grandin in "Blood of Guatemala" (a study of the K'iche Mayans during Spanish and ladino rule). There's other examples as well, but Scott started it all off (as far as I know).